The title compound, tricaesium heptasamarium(III) dodecaselenide, is setting a new starting point for realization of the channel structure of the Cs3M7Se12 series, now with M = Sm, Gd-Er. This Cs3Y7Se12-type arrangement is structurally based on the Z-type sesquiselenides M2Se3 adopting the Sc2S3 structure. Thus, the structural set-up of Cs3Sm7Se12 consists of edge- and vertex-connected [SmSe6]9- octahedra [dØ(Sm3+ - Se2-) = 2.931 Å], forming a rock-salt-related network [Sm7Se12]3- with channels along [001] that are apt to take up monovalent cations (here Cs+) with coordination numbers of 7 + 1 for one and of 6 for the second cation. The latter cation has a trigonal-prismatic coordination and shows half-occupancy, resulting in an impossible short distance [2.394 (4) Å] between symmetrically coupled Cs+ cations of the same kind. While one Sm atom occupies Wyckoff position 2b with site symmetry ..2/m, all other 11 crystallographically different atoms (namely 2 × Cs, 3 × Sm and 6 × Se) are located at Wyckoff positions 4g with site symmetry ..m.

Supplementary data and figures for this paper are available from the IUCr electronic archives (Reference: WM2561 ).

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the State of Baden-Württemberg (Stuttgart) and the German Research Foundation (DFG; Bonn) within the funding programme Open Access Publishing. We thank Dr Falk Lissner for the data collection.

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